For Iceland’s chief EU negotiator, Stefán Haukur Jóhannesson, “sustainability is the key word”. Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has another phrase that he would like to see taken up: “We need to update our mental maps.”

Where the Arctic is concerned, many are updating their maps urgently and with ulterior motives. On 15 May, for example, the Scottish National Party attacked the UK government for not taking the High North seriously enough – suggesting that the Arctic might become one front in the referendum on Scottish independence that has been pencilled in for 2014. There are, though, others who show little interest in updating their mental maps. On 26 April, John Lehman, who was navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, and is now an associate of Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for the US presidency, lamented: “We’re seeing the Soviets pushing into the Arctic with no response from us.”

It becomes apparent that one of the most appropriate words for the Arctic – because it applies both to the environment and to the politics – is “sensitive”.

The political sensitivity, both instinctive and calculated, of Arctic states – in particular, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which owns half the Arctic coastline – may prove one of the greatest obstacles to the EU’s hopes for long-term influence in the High North. The EU is bound to be reminded whose lands these are and warned not to step on toes.

National pride

Canada’s national anthem includes the lines, “With glowing hearts we see thee rise, / The True North strong and free!” And those are lines that Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes to invoke to give a constitutional mandate to his own strongly espoused northern strategy. He has made the High North so central to Canadian policy that in 2010 his government hauled G8 finance ministers all the way to Iqaluit on Baffin Island – in dark, deep-chilled February.

Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, adopted similar optics earlier this year, spending a week in the High North in March, another cold, dark month. Her purpose, though, was rather different from Harper’s. She wanted to portray herself not as a champion of the north, but as someone listening to the north.

It was a gesture appreciated by diplomats and observers, even those who can detect personal ambitions: Andreas Østhagen of the Arctic Institute suggests that Ashton is “desperate to make her own path and the Arctic way is the easy way to go”. If she succeeds, the benefits for the EU could be a voice in an area that produces much of the fish it eats and the energy it uses.

To get a greater voice, the EU will need to find a message that all the Arctic states like. “Supportive”, “listening”, “learning” and “sustainable development” are words likely to feature prominently in that message – the forthcoming communication. Wording that suggests the High North is empty, pristine, and lawless, or that suggests grand ambitions, is unlikely.

In effect, the EU will indicate that it wants to turn the Arctic into a rather ordinary arena of international politics, even though its future importance could yet be extraordinary.